Un bleuet loin du fjord

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The one and only meat pie recipe - or This is NOT a tourtière

(Commentaires en français plus bas)

This is by far the most popular post on my blog but it appears to have little clout if any among the anglosphere, so I thought I'd repost the English recipe again, for the sake of the world.

Once again, it's time to give you the meat pie recipe. I should probably say it's copyrighted to my grand-mother from Port-Alfred, but I don't think you can copyright recipes. So feel free to copy it, giving proper credits to the source, provided you never, ever call it a tourtière, otherwise I will hunt you down, rip your throat out, disembowel you then throw your guts into the depths of the Saguenay fjord to feed the Greenland sharks that swim in its abyss. Understood?

So here goes:

The one and only meat pie recipe (because all others are crap, trust me)

First, a warning: like tourtière (a completely unrelated dish, I must emphasize, unless you think blueberry pie is a variation on beef Wellington), it's better to make meat pies over two days. You prepare the dough for the crust and the filling the day before, then put them together the next day.

To make about three dozens muffin-sized pies (really, it's the best format) you'll need the following ingredients.

One dough recipe (though I suggest to make it double, just to be sure, plus you'll have enough to make sugar pie, blueberry pie, or any other kind of dessert pie your feel like). If you don't know how to make it, here's the embedded version, from the tourtière recipe, as you need the same basic dough, and I quote:

"
Here is Jorghnassen’s father’s recipe for the dough. It is very simple, and even with several rollings, the crust will stay tender.

* 1 lb of fat
* 5 cups flour
* 3 tsp baking powder
* 2 tsp salt

Mix these ingredients with a pastry cutter until grainy consistency.

* 1 cup cold milk
* 1/2 cup cold water
* 1 egg, beaten
* 3 tbsp brown sugar (or less)

In a bowl, mix well the beaten egg, milk, water, and brown sugar. Put the wet mix into the dry ingredients. Combine with a wooden spoon until dough consistency. The dough will be easier to roll if refrigerated for 12 to 24 hours.
"

Filling ingredients:
* 5.5 pounds of ground (or minced) pork
* 0.5 pound of ground veal
* 5 or 6 medium onions (1 per pound of meat), finely chopped
* 3 or 4 branches of celery, cut into tiny little pieces (see a pattern?)
* Salt and pepper to taste, a bit of allspice and herbes de Provence if you wish

Instructions:

Put all the above (except for the dough, duh) in a large cooking pot, in which you may have put a little bit of water (1/8 of a cup at most) first (to prevent sticking). Cook at low heat, stirring regularly, until all the pinkness of the meat is gone. Let it cook (always at low heat, uncovered) for 1 to 1.5 hours, until the liquid has reduced. Let it cool for a bit, then transfer to a large bowl (or bowls) and stick in the fridge overnight.

The next day, you'll need muffin tins (the more you have, the better), a bowl about 5.25 to 5.5 inches in diameter, and a small glass (but not a shooter), the latter two will be used to cut circles from the rolled dough. Preheat the oven to 350F. From that point, it's pretty simple. You put the larger dough circles in the bottom of the muffin tins (I strongly recommend greasing and flouring the tins beforehand, it'll make your life easier later), fill with the meat mixture, cover with a little dough circle, seal (make a little hole on top with a knife if you wish), and repeat until the muffin tins are filled. Then you put in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes (until the crust is nice and golden, make sure it's dark enough because if it's pale golden your bottom will be uncooked and you'll break the pies when trying to get them out of the tins).

After that, you let the pies cool a bit (10 minutes at least) before taking them out of the muffin tins. You eat a couple for supper, let the rest cool further, then freeze them until needed. Once frozen, you can reheat them (don't thaw them) in the oven at 300-350 for 20-25 minutes. Best served with plain ketchup and coleslaw, or with homemade apple sauce next to the turkey for the réveillon (that's on Xmas Eve, but at or after midnight, so technically on the 25th, the Christmas supper in Québec usually consists of leftovers from the réveillon).

After many repeated experiment, I found that the above quantities of meat give closer to 4.5 dozen muffin sized pies, and thus you need 1.5 "recipe" of dough (which is why I recomend to make a double dough recipe, i.e. 2 pounds of fat, shortening or lard, and 10 cups of flours). You can also make more "regular size" pies to reduce the amount of dough necessary. But you can't beat muffin-sized in terms of texture and crust to filling ratio.

Here's what meat pies I made all by myself look like:



My wife obviously has more talent when it comes to presentation. More pictures of the process are there if you need them. Also, don't put garlic in the filling.

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Le billet le plus populaire de mon blogue est de loin la recette de pâtés à la viande de grand-maman Laurence. Ça fait maintenant 5 ans qu'on en fait à chaque année, et cette année je me suis tapé tout ça tout seul. J'ai deux petite remarques à faire au sujet de la recette:

1- 6 livre de viande, avec les moules à muffin que j'ai, ça donne pas 3 douzaines de pâtés mais 4.5 douzaines (54 exactement hier). Ça prend par conséquent une recette et demie de pâte ("une recette" contenant une livre de crisco ou de saindoux, ça fait pas mal pareil; et 5 tasses de farine), c'est pourquoi je recommande toujours d'avoir deux recettes de pâtes pour 6 livres de viande.
2- Je recommande fortement de graisser et fariner les moules à muffins avant d'y mettre les pâtés. Ça aide pour le démoulage. Il faut s'assurer que les pâtés soit bien cuits et refroidis avant de les sortir des moules.

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Saturday, December 03, 2011

Portrait chinois - "Chinese portrait"

(English below)

Bon, mon frère m'a étiquetté dans une de ces chaînes de bloyes qui essaie d'avoir une croissance exponentielle. Juste pour le trip, j'oblige, mais j'ai l'impression que les ceusses que je vais inviter à faire de même ne le feront pas. Alors, tentative d'auto-description via des incongruités, ce que quelqu'un a appelé un portrait chinois.

Si j'étais:

1-Un titre de roman: la première chose qui m'est venu à l'esprit, fouille-moi pourquoi, c'est Le Cinquième cavalier. Après plus mûre réflection, je pencherais plutôt pour Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. C'est un des premiers romans qui soient et il est resté inachevé, ce qui a fait du Graal (ô que j'aime ce mot, il n'y a pas souvent de double a en français) cet éternel inatteignable, un puissant concept qui est resté imprégné dans la culture. Oui, d'autres auteurs ont fait des continuations et donné une fin à la quête, mais elles m'ont pas mal toutes laissé sur ma faim. Ma vie est une éternelle quête inachevée, avec plusieurs Graals entrevus, rêvés, imaginés, que je me dois de trouver ou de retrouver un jour. Je pense que ça me décrit mieux qu'une histoire de terrorisme et de bombe nucléaire cachée à New York pour libérer la Palestine.

2-Une créature mythologique: OK, je vais y aller avec un choix prévisible, mais je vais prendre le dragon. Pourquoi? Parce qu'il est omniprésent dans pratiquement toutes les cultures et a aussi ce caractère ambigü, il peut être associé à la nature, au bien comme au mal, et même à la neutralité. Qu'il s'appelle Smaug, ou Puff, qu'il soit le gentil mais farceur Dragon de Sinfest ou qu'il s'appelle Grougaloragran, tout le monde est fasciné les dragons. Dans la Bible, on dit que Dieu créa l'homme a son image, mais cela fait déjà quelques siècles que plusieurs pensent plutôt l'inverse. Dans les cultures est-asiatique comme en Chine, le dragon est justement un symbole d'un dieu tout-puissant, mais il est loin d'avoir l'apparence d'un homme. Peut-être que son apparence justement, est plus proche de la vraie nature de l'humain, une espèce de monstre incongru.

3-Un crime: outrage à un cadavre. Ça, ça sort de l'ordinaire et c'est tordu. J'ai toujours essayé d'être original (je n'y arrive pas tout le temps, comme en témoigne ma réponse #2, mais il est impossible d'être complètement original)

4-Une époque: la Renaissance du XIIe siècle, un temps d'effervescence intellectuelle qui n'a pas la prétension de la Renaissance et des Lumières, et qui reste méconnu.

5-Un manteau: un de ces manteaux d'hiver Chlorophylle garanti à vie, du temps qu'ils étaient fabriqués à Chicoutimi et non en Chine, relativement écolos et hyper-moderne en fibre recyclée.

6-Une scène: on parle d'une pièce de théâtre ou d'un endroit? J'irais avec une scène pastorale en automne. Mélange de nature avec juste assez de civilisation.

7-Un instrument de musique: le piano évidemment, le roi des instruments, pour l'étendue des notes et la possibilité d'en jouer plus que deux à la fois, et parce que c'est à la fois un instrument à cordes et à percussion. Avec un buste de Beethoven dessus, ça va de soi.

8-Un condiment: à une autre époque, j'aurais dit ketchup, j'en mettais sur tout. Maintenant, fierté nationale oblige, du sirop d'érable. C'est à la fois sucré et raffiné.

9-Une affiche publicitaire: oh que j'aimerais dire les affiches de Chez Jacob lingerie sur St-Denis à Montréal, un petit plaisir pour le regard sur le chemin de McGill du temps que j'habitais sur le Plateau et que j'avais abandonné le métro parce que je voulais faire de l'exercice et ne plus payer le plein prix pour la passe de transport en commun (la seule bonne chose que Gérald Tremblay a faite, instaurer un prix étudiant pour les 18-25 ans, rendu à 26, j'en avais les moyens, mais j'avais pas le coeur pour retourner au tarif régulier qui bien sûr avait augmenté significativement entre temps). Mais ce n'est pas vraiment moi ça. Je dirais plutôt un panneau vide sur un bord de route perdu. Une cicatrice dans le décor.

10-Un proverbe: Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête. J'adore la métaphore.

Bon, maintenant "taggons" futilement.

Devadar
Ms C
Veggie Carrie (même si je n'ai plus accès à ce blogue, semble-t-il)

Si vous étiez::
1-Un arachnide (notez le "n" dedans, je ne parle pas de pinotte)
2-Un état américain
3-Un établissement d'enseignement
4-Un des sept péchés capitaux
5-Une arme
6-Un jour férié
7-Une chanteuse pop
8-Une salle dans une maison
9-Un objet de science-fiction
10-Une religion

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Well, my older brother tagged me with one of those "chain blog" things that tries to grow exponentially. I have to answer ten "If I was..." "questions", subjects chosen by the tagger, and the tag three more people to do the same with subjects of my own. So here goes, my answers for my Chinese portrait.

If I was:

1- The title of a novel: The first thing that came to mind, for whatever reason, is The Fifth Horseman. It does sound sort of cool. But, thinking a bit more, a more appropriate title and novel would be Perceval, the Story of the Grail (though it doesn't sound as nice in English, and misses the "or" that makes the tale of the Grail the alternate title. It's of course, one of the first novels ever written, and the fact that it was never finished has been imprinted in the cultural psyche to make the Grail the unreachable goal concept. My life is an unfinished quest, filled with many Holy Grails seen, imagined or dreamed of that I must one day find or retrieve.

2- A mythological creature: OK, I'll go for the obvious choice, a dragon, because they're basically in all cultures and have been associated with both forces of nature, good, evil and even neutrality. Whether its name is Smaug, Puff, Grougaloragran or it's the mischievous but friendly Sinfest dragon, dragons have always fascinated pretty much everyone. In the Bible they say God created man in his image, though for a couple of centuries now, many have thought that it's the reverse that is true. Yet the Dragon is a symbol of an all-powerful god in many east Asian cultures, such as the Chinese one, yet in appearance it is not human at all, but perhaps it's much closer to the true human nature: some sort of twisted monster.

3-A crime: violation of a corpse. It's twisted and pretty rare. I try to be original (though I often fail).

4-A time period: the Renaissance of the 12th century, a period of intellectual and cultural effervescence that has none of the pretension and vanity of the later Renaissance or the Enlightenment.

5-A coat: one of does lifetime guaranteed Chlorophylle winter coats, back when they made them in Chicoutimi. Both somewhat green (as in environment friendly) and high-tech made of recycled fibers.

6-A scene: I'm not sure if that means like a theater scene, or just a place. I'll go with a pastoral scene in the fall. A nice mix of nature with just enough civilization.

7-A musical instrument: a piano obviously, the king of instruments, for its range and its capacity to play more than two notes at once, and the fact that is both a string and a percussion instrument. With a bust of Beethoven on top of course.

8-A condiment: back in the day, I might have said ketchup since I used to put it on everything (except breakfast and dessert). Now, national pride obliges, maple syrup, for it is both sweet and refined.

9-A billboard advertisement: I almost want to say one of those Jacob lingerie one on Saint-Denis in Montreal, a nice sight on my way to McGill back when I lived on the Plateau and didn't want to take the metro anymore (though I had the means, I no longer wanted to pay the full price for the pass; the only good thing mayor Gérald Tremblay ever did was make a 18-25 student pass, at 26 I didn't want to go back to regular fare, which had gone up a lot since I last paid that amount). But I'm not a lingerie model and wouldn't want to be look at with lust by hundreds of guys. So I'll pick an empty billboard on the side of an isolated country road. An eyesore in a otherwise nice scenic route.

10-A proverb: The early bird gets the worm. Yeah, it's completely different than the one I picked in French but the English version of that on just doesn't sound as nice ("You reap what you sow" is boring, while "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" still feels clumsier, doesn't have the connotation of "storm" as much). I'm not the biggest fan of robins (the early bird you'll see eating worms), but the imagery is better than the French version ("Le monde appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt", or "The world belongs to those who wake up early", which is quite presumptuous).

OK, I will futilely tag the following people (I know they practically never post anymore):

Devadar
Ms C
Veggie Carrie (I don't even have access to that one any more).

Here's your Chinese portrait assignment: what if you were...

1-An arachnide
2-A US state
3-A teaching institution
4-One of the seven mortal sins
5-A weapon
6-A bank holiday
7-A female pop singer
8-A room in the house
9-An object from science-fiction
10-A religion

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